Abstract

Bloggers are able to publish political commentary online, without having to deal with traditional media gatekeepers, such as news editors and other media professionals. Networked blogging is impacting on political life as individual politicians and citizen‑journalists go online in the newest media genre. The blogosphere helps construct citizen‑users' democratic literacies and participation in new ways. Using a governmental framework and selected examples, I analyze the generic features of the political blog, and the nature of the relationships and capacities formed by the personal modes of address in specific virtual publics. Blogs are obviously more than ways of "preaching to the choir" (Lenhart, qtd in AFP, 2003)  but what is the nature of the e‑governance work they are doing?

Abstract

As a consequence of the advance of information technology into the realm of public administration, we are now faced with a potential increase in efficiency of a scope and power not previously seen. The intentional use of information technology to modernise the public sector goes internationally by the name of e‑Government. While e‑ Government's greatest impact thus far has been to promote customer satisfaction, its guiding spirit is more ambitious, with the fundamental reorganisation of the entire public sector in its sights. The overall purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how public administration at a local authority level adapts to impending e‑Government by considering the discourses that are manifested and how they are used to understand and legitimise electronic administration. The present study uses critical discourse analysis to shed light on those discursive orders that are revealed in the course of deliberations on electronic administration at the local government level. On the one hand, it is possible to see electronic administration as a refinement ‑ and a reform ‑ of a bureaucracy's techniques. On the other hand, it is equally possible to view it in the light of free market ideology.